What's Your Favorite Heavy Lifting Stone for Knives?

[duke762]

What stone, hone, or surface, do you like to do the heavy work on knife edges. I mean the wonky ones that have never had bevels from the factory, abused, chipped etc. Do ever start the party with a mill bastard file?

I've been seeing some D2 and AUS 8 blades lately that limit my stone selection to synths. I've been using a progression of India's to bang out new bevels and work up an edge. Novaculite hones don't seem to like these steels at all, in a bevel set situation, but will improve an edge once you get it started well.

I'm kind of feeling that I might get some good use out of a diamond hone of some kind for the heavy stuff. Files don't work on every thing, but a diamond surface will. On certain stainless steels, India's can be painfully slow. Even a course or medium can feel skatey with some steels.

And there we go, I've almost completely convinced myself I need a diamond hone...maybe a DMT.........

So what do you like for heavy work, below 1k on knives?

 

[Legion]

Really heavy, Coarse India. I have been known to bust out a coarse diamond plate, but the India gets it done most of the time, and I have a million of them piling up in the shed.

Moderately heavy, medium India, Shapton Glass 500, Washita or Turkey stone.

 

[jj_sharp]

In the past I used a 4 sided diamond block. It is inexpensive and works well.

Today I would go with crystalon or india type.
Sometimes I follow up with a soft arkansas or sharpmaker.

Sometimes I leave the edge course. After all these decades, my methods still vary.

 

[Alum of Potash]

Depends on the knife and the steel. For carbon steel, a medium or fine India suits me fine, followed by a soft or hard (current nomenclature) Arkansas respectively to leave things a bit toothy. For general stainless, a fine DMT is hard to beat, followed by a 1k/3k Suehiro synth combo. This works very well with carbon steel knives too.

 

[Tirvine]

I use a Sharpening Supplies store brand 500.

 

[cotedupy]

Wot others have said…

Coarse Crystolon or India. There are no better stones for this kind of thing, and they effectively cost nothing.

Crystolons don’t glaze like Indias do on wear-resistant stainless, cos they’re significantly more friable. And Aus 8 is very wear resistant.

 

[H Brad Boonshaft]

Yup Coarse Crystolon or India, doesn’t everyone have a box of them?

India are way under rated. They make Precision Ground Flat stones from them.

If you want diamond, I use an Atoma 140 ($50 free shipping on Amazon) and a new Sharpal dual grit 300/1000 grit diamond plate. They are $100 but dual grit so 2 for 1, $50 each side. Some online knife guys have tested them and claim them to be the flattest and most uniform diamond distribution of all the diamond plates, Atoma and DMT included.

They are very smooth and cut steel fast, I hone a lot of hard, vintage and antique tool steel, I grind on grinder wheels then the 300 to clean and refine the bevel angle and 1k, from the 1k side I go to a 1k stone.

300/1k diamond work well on VG10.

 

[buca3152]

My favorite for heavy work like reprofiling is xc dmt 11 1l2 x 2 1/2 inch. This is for my kitchen(stainless) and my edcs. The long length is super although i usually use a 2x6 dmt xc/f for most touchups.